There is an old saying, “a happy mama means a happy home.” Translated for husbands means, keep your wife happy and you might get some lovey dovey, hanky panky or silence during the football game. Sometimes, we as husbands have to begrudgingly do tasks to receive our little favors in return. Going to a chick flick and buying her women’s hygiene products at eleven at night in a convenience store may be part of the deal.

My wife finally coerced me to go get a pedicure because she couldn’t take the constant jabbing of my toenails in bed. I resisted as long as I could until she used the threat of no sexy times for me. She tried to insist that I would enjoy it and other men do it. “Baloney, no man would be caught dead in one of those joints”, I’d say. The moratorium on sexy times turned out to be true and off I went to Ms Kim’s Salon.

The deal was we had to venture across town at night to secure my identity. If this got out in the neighborhood that I was a salon patron, the men folk would be whooping it up like a bunch of crazed hyenas. I entered the establishment with my wife in tow, who was acting like kid in a candy store. “Honey, you can get a haircut, and a medi-pedi all in one visit”, she exuberantly announced to me and all of the other patrons.

I lowered my baseball hat and Ms Kim took my arm and sat me in a reclining chair.

This was no ordinary recliner, it had a built-in tub for the feet, a massage remote control for vibration control and heat. So there I sat in the big comfortable chair, with the salon girls giggling as I submerged my size thirteen feet into the warm water bathtub. Sitting next to me were other women with one exception of teenage boy getting his feet worked on. I asked him if he was dragged in here too and before he could answer his mother chimed in, that he likes it.

I will not deny that this didn’t feel comfortable and soothing, but it is the principle of why we are here. We as husbands are not supposed to be pampering ourselves with beauty products and getting ourselves all dolled up. He are hunters and gatherers, not dancers and prancers. As the experience progressed, there was some pain, some laughter and almost tears when the tools were used on my tender tootsies.

Believe it or not there was a small selection of men’s magazines to choose from, so I diverted my attention to a sport magazine. I was thumbing through it when I locked on to an article about a guy up in Alaska who was a six time dog sledding champion. There is a big race every year where dogsledders from all over the world enter this thousand mile trek across the Yukon. I was in awe of these guys who endured this journey for a meager prize and free Alpo.

The journey that I had to make was from the nail shop in disposable flip flops to secure my clear acrylic that was brushed onto my toenails. I thought of those guys in the great white north bundled in parkas and boots and then I had to sashay to my car in flimsy little sandals.

Oh well, we all can’t be Commodore Perry exploring the north pole, some of us have to be good husbands no matter what it takes.